If you approach this world expecting everything to be smooth and lovely, it punches you, again and again, and you're knocked down, windless.
Say, instead, it's a horrible place. Know this entirely. There's a calm, an immense relief, in accepting this: that the world is bad. Okay, you say. I know this, so each new badness is not a shock.
It's a bad place and it needs me. I'm useful here because it's a dark and horrible place and I have light in me. Let it be the good that surprises you, jolts your slumber.
Israel can gives you an illusion. You see pretty beaches, waves, fields and flowers, orange trees. It can look so lovely here, you expect to feel wonderful. You expect it to be easy. And over and over again it punches you and you are shocked.
Don't let the beauty blind you. It's a broken place, a needy place. You did not come here to bathe in its light. You came here to bring your light to it.
The secret of life, of a good life, perhaps is to be cheerful pessimist. Once you recognize that 'the world is a horrible place' (which it really isn't) you are prepared, and can concentrate on the good parts. And then help to augment, support, and reinforce them.
ReplyDeleteI am always comforted by Nabaneeta Dev Sen's poem:
"No need to hurry
Things will remain
Whether you are
or not"